How It Works

Most goodhearted people do not have personal contacts with people in other countries whose children are dying from simple causes that could be fixed. So even though these goodhearted people might think that Jesus loves the little children of the world, they don’t know what to do about it.

Most churches have structures with frontline contacts in the 40 countries that are not on target to do their part to close the “Promise Gap.”

Churches do have frontline outreach channels. It is through these already established channels that additional assistance can be provided.

So here comes Mission Match.

Goodhearted people donate any amount they want (the suggested amount is $50 a year) to empty tomb’s Mission Match. Bonus: The gift is tax deductible.

These donated funds, these many “drops in the bucket,” combine to overflow to make up the Mission Match Matching Contributions pool. Your donation is almost doubled: After reasonable expenses (that’s 15% of your gift), the remaining 85% of your gift is doubled when matched with the money raised by the congregation carrying out the project.

Individual congregations then apply for a Matching Contribution amount from this pool of Matching Contributions funds. On an application, the congregation describes a project to be done in one of the 40 countries. The project needs to address one of the causes of death in children under the age of five in the named country, with plans to do the project in Jesus’ name. Also, the congregation agrees to raise, from within their own congregation, an amount equal to the Matching Contribution they have requested.

So the congregation is invested in the solution as much as Mission Match.

Once the application is approved by Mission Match, the congregation raises an amount of money at least equal to the requested the Matching Contribution.

Once the congregation raises that amount, and tells Mission Match of its success in raising the funds, Mission Match sends the Matching Contribution to the congregation.

The congregation then applies both their own money and the Mission Matching Contribution money to the named project within a specific timeframe. The congregation commits to provide a report to Mission Match about how the project went.

There is a more detailed description of the Application Guidelines here and Application Procedures here if you would like them.

According to Mission Match, the Promise Gap is the difference between goals set by world leaders to reduce the rate of children dying under age five, and the actual rate of under-5 children dying.

An empty tomb analysis suggests that because the target rate level was not reached, 1.3 million children under age five died in 2015 who would have been alive if the target rate level had, in fact, been successfully reached. And another 1.3 million died in 2017.

That’s a lot of little kids dying, and a lot of very sad parents, because the promise was not kept to reach the target reduction levels. Goals were set in 1990 and 2000. Both were missed.

Now new goals have been set. We can help get the reduction rates on track now.